Quote Originally Posted by machinor View Post
Watchman is right about the conscript instead of slaughter issue, although this practice was probably limited to soldiers of the same culture like between Hellenistic armies or Roman ones in the civil wars (and even then it was seldom enough to be noted as a sign of valour and mercy... or dire need of soldiers); Caesar comes to mind who spared and conscripted any captured Pompeiian while Pompeii had captured soldiers executed as traitors. That may be propaganda, though.

The execute-ransom-thing may be renamed to "hunt down and slaughter remaining enemy troops" (=execute) or "sack enemy camp" (thus allowing remaining enemy forces to flee and regroup =ransom). I think that may be the most fitting solution.

According to EB, Hamalcar...Hamilcar?...Himilcar?...the Barca guy, whatever, treated captured enemies like POWs during the Mercenary War until the Mercenaries killed Carthaginian prisoners, at which point Barca repayed them in kind. Just throwing it out there.